The way we use the term “trigger” reflects something odd about the Zeitgeist of the early decades of the 21st century. As it became a common term in popular psychology, “trigger” could have taken on positive, neutral or negative associations. A trigger could have been any cue yielding any automated response. Yet somehow in popular parlance, the word trigger has come to be associated exclusively with the negative cues that throw us into turmoil or even trauma.
This is a lost opportunity because focusing on triggers as a negative influence distracts us from the reality that almost everything we feel, think and do is to a greater or lesser extent triggered by people and things around us.
In addition to negative triggers, we are exposed to people and things that trigger a positive automated response in our minds and bodies. When someone smiles at you, your body and mind respond. Sitting in the usual seat at your neighborhood coffee shop might trigger your ability to concentrate on something you need to get done or summon your natural talent for striking up a conversation with a stranger. When someone tells a joke or gives you a compliment, this triggers changes in your physiology, emotions and thoughts.
If you choose to, you can even proactively manage the cues you encounter during your day so that you are triggered in positive ways more often. When you repeat an affirmation (positive framing phrase) enough times, you establish the neural-physical pathways to trigger positive feelings or more productive ways of looking at the world. Intentional use of triggers isn’t a particularly new thing. Athletes and other performers have been using them for years. But few people take full advantage of their ability to use triggers change how they feel and what they focus on. I have developed a set of phrases that through repetition has come to trigger relatively predictable positive changes in my emotions, thoughts and physiology – making it easier for me to focus on work, stay open to other people’s ideas and fall asleep at night. These positive triggers don’t eliminate stressors from my life. However, they do calm my physiological and mental reactions to stress, enabling me to take a step back and think more clearly as I deal with the stressor that has agitated my body and mind.
As you learn the cues that bring out the best parts of you, you can consciously integrate these positive triggers into your daily schedule. Rather than thinking of ourselves as passive victims of the many very real negative triggers we encounter in daily life, perhaps we could reframe our use of the word to highlight the reality that we are constantly triggered in both negative and positive ways by the people and things in our environment.
With that understanding, it is possible for us learn how to integrate more positive triggers into our lives and work, so that we feel better, think more clearly, and act more constructively more often.
The kicker is that as we learn what triggers the best aspects of ourselves, it may turn out that others find that spending time with us becomes a positive trigger for them as well. In a world of unintended negative triggers, we could benefit from having more people around who use positive triggers to restore balance and bring out the best in themselves, those around them and the world.
© Dana Cogan, 2024, all rights reserved.